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Dark Avatar chat log
This is a running log of the developer chat in #galciv on February 7, 2007, for Dark Avatar. ---- Where in DA can you see how much you are gaining from the new economic and research treaties? :Brad: I will send this to CariElf -- Cari Begle who is our lead developer. :Cari: The economic treaties are listed under income on the Domestic Economy screen and the research treaty production is on the research screen Will the release of DA be accompanied by patches with non-"feature" improvements to DL (such as the new tech tree display method, for example)? :Brad: The new tech tree display is a Dark Avatar feature. We are releasing GalCiv II 1.50 (Dread Lords) which contains bug fixes and such we found while doing Dark Avatar. Why is there a spending split between military, social and science production? I can understand the spending split between military and social production; factories can only produce so much. However, research labs are another structure all together. So why must science spending be affected by this split as well? :Brad: The way to look at it is that you are hiring workers. Which are a finite resource. You can split them off in 3 ways. So even though military and social production use the same buildings, you are still effectively having to divide your work force up. Why release 'Gold Edition' at the same time as the expansion? And why isn't Dark Avatar in stores? :Brad: With regards to Gold edition -- well, here's a way to look at it, we're gamers ourselves. And one of our pet peeves about games has always been that expansions come out and if we don't have the original we have to go and find the original which can be really expensive for people. So when we decided to do this, we wanted people new people to be able to instantly be able to be up to speed with the game. :As for the second question: Shelf space is extremely expensive. It's almost impossible for a company our size to get two SCUs of the same product line at retail at once. So we couldn't easily get Dark Avatar at retail unless we wanted to pay a lot for shelf space. And had we done that, we would have had to cut the feature set of Dark Avatar down significantly. And we really wanted Dark Avatar to be more than just a normal expansion but to be a quasi-sequel in some respects. So by having it direct, we were able to add a lot more features to it. And then by having a Gold Edition, people would still have the option to get it at retail. Spies. The new DA spy system requires that you injure your opponents by disabling tiles in order to perform basic intel. Why isn't there an option of not injuring your opponents or "friends". :Brad: Espionage is never friendly. As the British once said, gentlemen don't eaves drop on gentlemen. Will I be able to use other peoples ship packs with the new custom race creation? :Cari: Yes, you can set the custom race's style that they are using. So that you can create the Klingon race and use the Klingon ships, or Romulan, etc. Are there some changes to the combat system in DA? And what is the difference between the first galciv2 to DA? :Brad: Yes. The big change is that combat is now based on weapons. Rather than ships. In GalCiv II, combat was ship to ship. That is, it would sum up your attack and then sum up a given ship's defense. Now, each individual weapon fires and wears down the defense on a target ship. The net effect of that is a capital ship with lots of weapons can kill, in a single round, a bunch of small ships. Of course, we also made capital ships cost a LOT mroe both in resources and in logistics. Can i load one of my saved games from DL into DA :Brad: I highly doubt it. :Cari: No. Where can I find out how much powerplants are affecting a given colony? :Brad: That would be in the improvement summary screen. Why can't building mining bases be accomplished by Constructors...why is the new ship type necessary? :Brad: Because constructors build starbases. It's like saying why can't constructors invade planets. They're very different types of things. Plus, you could build a ship that has both a constructor module and a mining module. So you could have one ship that does both. It just has to do with the default ship types we provide to keep the price down. Does distance reduce the amount you can get from an asteroid mine? And if so, how much? :Brad: Yes. The further away asteroids are from their target, the fewer resources (as a %) you get. So you ahve to make some tough decisions about where you send those resources to. To the nearby planet or the mroe distant one that has a lot of factories on it. Production goes down 10% for each tile. Down to a minimum of at least 33%. Will Stardock become involved with any Xbox live marketplace games, Wii virtual console, or the ps3 marketplace (I am unaware whether it has a special name or not)? :Brad: Very possible regarding Xbox Live Marketplace. We don't have anything in particular going on. But I am a big advocate of what Microsoft is doing with Live on Windows. You mentioned having a ship with construction and mining modules. If you have a ship like this, will it still be destroyed when it builds a starbase, or will it just be left without the construction modules (or with the construction modules disabled)? :Brad: It would still be destroyed. Because what the constructor module does is convert the hull and other parts of the ship into raw material for the starbase. The starbase itself is not located within the starbase module. Rather, it a nano-based technology that converts the matter of the ship into the starbase. Are there any plans for a second expansion pack with more robust diplomacy and improved AI? :Brad: The AI is always being improved. I have an AI update on my computer right now that I'm just waiting for marketing to be okay with us releasing an update. Every time I play, I update the AI. ;) As for the more robust diplomacy, that will depend heavily on what players ask specifically. Adding "features" is easy. Having opponents that use those features takes more effort. When we play the old Dread Lords campaign, will we be able to use the improvements to the game system from Dark Avatar? :Brad: No. We did this because the new features of Dark Avatar come from the story. I.e. during the campaign of Dark Avatar, the asteroid mining and custom environments are explained during the campaign. Since Dread Lords takes place first, it woudln't have made sense for those features to show up. You stated: What the constructor module does is convert the hull and other parts of the ship into raw material for the starbase. Does this mean that a Huge hull will provide a larger Starbase then using a Tiny Hull? Would available weapons/defenses on a converted ship affect initial module option on a constructed starbase? :Brad: The module can only convert so much matter. So no, the module does 1 thing. Are there any changes to the Metaverse? and will DL and DA have separate Metaverse's? :Cari: The metaverse is using the same table, but DA will affect the scoring because there are more factors. Multiplayer? hehe its been talked about since the birth of calciv2, but are there any plans for that in the future? :Brad: Probably.